Fastest way to level (requires a lvl 70 class with Dots)

[pickles]

These forums have provided much amusement during work and great resources for my multiboxing so I wanted to share something in return.

I did not find this technique posted anywhere else on these forums. I am also sure that I did not come up with this technique, just adapted it for my use and wanted to share in case someone wants to get an alt caught up real quick to their group.

That being said, I use my Level 70 moonkin to do this. I only know the levels for Horde instances, and I believe that Alliance has an even easier time with Stockades.

Group with your lowbie once he is able to go into RFC (level 8 ). Have him wait inside the instance at the entrance. Run in with your 70 and dot the elites. Once you are sure they will die to your dots, run out of the instance before they die. I use Insect Swarm and a low level Moonfire in RFC.

Leave your low level in the instance and when the Elites die you will notice he will get all the XP as though he killed them himself.

Now for some reason you will only get about 1/2 xp for any mobs that are NOT humanoids. However 1/2 xp for an elite is still very good.

RFC is where you can start doing this.. Wailing Caverns (level 10) gets a little better especially because the first boss is so close to the entrance. I pull the mobs with either body pulls or faire fire, take them to the entrance, dot them up and run out.

As soon as I can, I go to SFK (lvl 14) just be careful of the mobs that throw up the shield making them immune to magic. I just go ahead and kill them then dot up the rest.

RFK is where it starts getting good because most of the mobs are real close and most are humaniods.

Then of course Scarlet Monastery is even better. This is where you will start to see 1 to 1.5 bubbles of xp per pull (3 or 4 mobs)

Using this technique I level my alts to 40 in about 22 hrs or so.

Some Tips

You can only pull from so far in the instance before the mobs will start to reset. That is fine, just reset the instance and start from scratch. This keeps you from having to run too far.

If I feel like I'm going to get the 5 instance per hour cap, then I will just run through the whole instance with my alt once I am at the point where I can no longer pull them to the entrance. This usually gives me enough of a buffer where I dont hit the cap.

Get the 30 stam lw Clefthide Leg Armor and put it on a lvl 8 grey cloth item that wont become soulbound to you. That way you can reuse it on a future alt.
By using the Leg Armor it becomes very hard for you to be killed after that by an elite that didnt die to your dots.

I only pull 3 maybe 4 mobs in SM at a time because with global cooldown between dots, they will die before you can run out.

I imagine a warlock or shadow priest would have a much easier time doing this than a druid plus you could shield your alt before you run out, or aoe fear.

The easiest time I ever had was with my shaman. I just dropped a stoneclaw totem usually by the time they had killed the totem they were one tick from dying.

Last but not least, I use this technique because I do not have a high level pally or 70 mage to aoe grind the instances.

I hope this helps someone and I look forward to seeing more videos and laughing at the people getting one-shotted.



edited for clarity

[Eteocles]

Interesting...I hadn't considered that. I'll give it a shot later(also a boomkin ;D) though timing the ticks so that you're out + mobs die without killing your alt will be tough...

[Wilbur]

Me and Los were doing this with his Warlock a while back in the deadmines. To be honest, I'd fairly sure its not efficient enough to get decent XP, you'd be far better served using a Mage to pull the Instance and make things go KA-BOOM.

:-)

[Skuggomann]

Well pulling the whole shibang and usign SoC might work well :)

... i better try this to chek it out btw :)

[Los]

Well lvl 40 in 22 hours is pretty efficient in my book, its far from what im capable of atm. I'd love to see some footage from these ventures so i can try it myself some time :). I am wondering (again) do you log off due to resetting a lot?

[Monkofdoom]

Very interesting approach although it does seem like it would be inefficient (once you've killed a few groups You'd be running back and fourth miles to get out of the instance - but interesting idea.

Although maybe not a preferable method for a lot of people but does the same work if the character dies + releases ? For example if you run through the instance get stuff to low health + dotted and u die, then res your 70 with a char you are leveling. (Yes I know repair bills) but u could in theory make the system more efficient if it works ?

[Eteocles]

Some of us don't have a mage to use/borrow ;p My GM's already pissed at having 2 shamen, a rogue and 2 druids in the guild...he doesn't know about my third Druid yet so that should be interesting >.>

But yeah, thta is true...the efficiency is lost beyond a distance from the portal(Though small instances like SM GY wouldn't be so bad), and it's useless in deadmines since nothing's elite near the portal anymore lol

[unit187]

My GM's already pissed at having 2 shamen, a rogue and 2 druids in the guild...he doesn't know about my third Druid yet so that should be interesting >.>
why would anyone care and even pissed off about a person having more then 1 character in the guild?

I have 7 characters in the raiding guild I am in now and all is fine.

[Eteocles]

He has something against me I think...he won't let me assist in raids half the time even though I'm one of the few that bothers to memorize anything raidboss related and doesn't have to be retold what to do every time and have been in guild longer than he has(leadership change awhile back)

He went on an alt kicking spree recently, which started with just my alts,(Including one I WAS LOGGED ONTO AT THAT TIME) then he kicked some random inactive ones to "support" his statement of removing inactives(again, despite kicking a char I WAS LOGGED INTO and had been for hours) as well as saying "multi-boxing doesn't count, your extras aren't charas" or something equally stupid, till a few others piped up with me who also had alts in guild and basically threatened mutiny if he pulled that shit, 5mins later I got my char back in guild lol

But yeah enough drama venting ;p

[Boylston]

He has something against me I think...he won't let me assist in raids half the time even though I'm one of the few that bothers to memorize anything raidboss related and doesn't have to be retold what to do every time and have been in guild longer than he has(leadership change awhile back)

He went on an alt kicking spree recently, which started with just my alts,(Including one I WAS LOGGED ONTO AT THAT TIME) then he kicked some random inactive ones to "support" his statement of removing inactives(again, despite kicking a char I WAS LOGGED INTO and had been for hours) as well as saying "multi-boxing doesn't count, your extras aren't charas" or something equally stupid, till a few others piped up with me who also had alts in guild and basically threatened mutiny if he pulled that shit, 5mins later I got my char back in guild lol

But yeah enough drama venting ;p

You, sir, need a new guild!

[Eteocles]

Heck no I love the rest of 'em, one guy on a powertrip ain't gonna scare me off ;p And the real GM's still there just not leading or super active right now

[ngilbert]

same technique works in everquest, just have to hit the mob once for it to count (before they zone out)

[Lokked]

Everquest Powerleveling was all about using the bard's Charm spell to cause mobs to kill each other.

Then just have the lowbie whack the almost dead mob once, then finish it off with another charmed mob.

The lowbie would get full XP because mob-on-mob damage doesn't count at all!


Anyways....going to try this out on a lvl 6 shaman with my 70 lock in RFC :)

[pickles]

Just wanted to post a screenie. Keep in mind the 1.5 hours at this level (35). I have quit leveling this guy and just mess around with him in undercity. So at level 35 each level takes about 30 mins or less so I would be level 39 or so in 22 hours.
This pally was also the first one that I used this technique with, so it took a bit of tweaking to get it right.

Also to answer some of the posts above.

A mage/ pally aoe grinding would probably be as fast if not faster, I however do not have access to either of those.

As far as having to run a lot. You can't run very far in and expect them to follow you back to the entrance. They will reset. However you do not need to clear the entire entrance out each time. Just to the point where they stop following you back to the front, then reset the instance.

I also just started to run into the 5 instances per hour cap, but only because I finally got my technique down. I just run him through the entire instance at that time to get myself below the 5 instance per hour since it takes a while to do the whole instance with a Moonkin.


http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1714/picfordualboxrl9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Monkofdoom]

Failing images :(

[vultuk]

Twas me that posted this here originally! ;)

Efficiency wise you'll find it's quite efficient! Pulling the whole instance with a pally/mage yes is fast but gives not as much XP. Also, on instances like Stockades where you can basically single pull the whole instance you'll realise it becomes less efficient.

You can only reset an instance a maximum of 4 times in every hour, so pulling the whole instance, killing them (in stockades at least) takes less than 15 minutes making downtime much harder waiting the extra time for the instance to reset.

The way I (and the OP) suggested means you can spend 15 minutes pulling dotting mobs and leaving the instance and then reset the instance, this means lots of XP and less downtime.

[Otlecs]

I tried this last night in the Stockade, with my lock. He's not ideal for the job, being only T4 and demo spec rather than affliction, but I thought I'd give it a go.

For me, personally, the mage AoE fest is a much better option. As soon as my lock walked out of the instance, the rest of my team was set upon by the very upset gang of mobs, and died in seconds - long before most of them succumbed to the DoTs.

Perhaps there's some technique to be learnt in making this effective, but I'll stick to the mage for now :)

[vultuk]

Well it requires a Dot class to work as the OP says. But, the optimal class to do this with is a Priest

Advantage being as you run out of the instance you simply shield your lil low level character. The shield should hold up against most mobs.

You also have a nice advantage if your low level alt is a pally and you can just Bubble, but that does of course slow you down with having a 2 minute CD.

[Otlecs]

I don't boost single characters, so a single target shield wouldn't work for me either. Now, if we had Prayer of Shielding..... ;)

Even then then shield would be downranked for being cast on a low level character.

edit: I just re-read the strategy, and realise that the failure is in my execution of it. Specifically, I missed the fact that each pull consists of only three or four mobs when using this method.

I was still doing a three-pull clear in Stockade.

:oops:

[kadaan]

Really wish I had a Pally. I've got a T5-ish mage that I've been using to try and power level a priest. Only level 23 with 9h /played :(. It would be much better if I filled the party up for the group bonus instead of just mage+priest, but recently I've just been doing one or two stockade clears on my lunch break.

The right wing of Stockades sucks. The Convicts sometimes spam backhand (2s stun) which makes it difficult.

[Eteocles]

Yeah the stockades is(are?) a bitch, moreso for us non-instant aoers...I pulled the entire first hall or so with my boomkin to aoe down; shortly after I had gathered them all into a room, I popped barkskin and started casting hurricane...only to be kicked and silenced by a convict. Tried to wrath, ate another kick...every few seconds, kick kick dodge kick slam kick...PANIC BUTTON LOLZ, unshifted, lifebloom, rejuv, start moonfiring for my life, almost died but didn't lol; after that I just 1shotted them with starfire or 2shotted with wrath instead ;p

[Vyndree]

Yeah the stockades is(are?) a bitch, moreso for us non-instant aoers...I pulled the entire first hall or so with my boomkin to aoe down; shortly after I had gathered them all into a room, I popped barkskin and started casting hurricane...only to be kicked and silenced by a convict. Tried to wrath, ate another kick...every few seconds, kick kick dodge kick slam kick...PANIC BUTTON LOLZ, unshifted, lifebloom, rejuv, start moonfiring for my life, almost died but didn't lol; after that I just 1shotted them with starfire or 2shotted with wrath instead ;p

Stocks/VC(deadmines) is great for a feral druid. That's how I got my 4 shaman to catch up to my warrior (who leveled with them up until they reached my lvl40 paladin).

Just swipe spam with thorns and you can pull at least a wing at a time. Imp Leader of the Pack ftw. Only bad part was the stocks boss who fears, but that was before the fear change (now they won't drop aggro when they fear you).

Remember to keep up demoralizing roar. ;)

[Eteocles]

I've respec'd like 5 times recently for raid-assisting reasons lately so I'm not keen on doing more just yet lol, will keep that in mind though; more fun to run around 1shotting things with insect swarm spam anyways, breezing through quests ;)

[marvein]

Twas me that posted this here originally! ;)

Efficiency wise you'll find it's quite efficient! Pulling the whole instance with a pally/mage yes is fast but gives not as much XP. Also, on instances like Stockades where you can basically single pull the whole instance you'll realise it becomes less efficient.

You can only reset an instance a maximum of 4 times in every hour, so pulling the whole instance, killing them (in stockades at least) takes less than 15 minutes making downtime much harder waiting the extra time for the instance to reset.

The way I (and the OP) suggested means you can spend 15 minutes pulling dotting mobs and leaving the instance and then reset the instance, this means lots of XP and less downtime.

That is a flawed calculation actually. You do not get more exp in an instance if you take longer to do it.

Say a full clear of an instance gives you 3000 exp. and you can only go it 5 times in an hour because of the instance reset that is 15,000exp

Well if it takes you 5 minutes to clear the instance in 3 pulls or if it takes you 12.3333 minutes to clear you still get the same amount of exp per hour per instance. the difference is aoeing down an instance 5 times then waiting for the cooldown takes less effort and time than spending the full hour clearing the max number. ie you get no break or downtime to do other things (like maybe kill other mobs for more exp) or cleanup your inventory from the run. or spend time going back and looting the drops from said AoE, etc.

The method of the OP however is a great one if you dont have a high lvl mage or paladin to boost with so in that I give kudos in finding a new way to do it.